


Before the Suns Set

by objectlesson



Category: Rent (2005), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Crossover, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, HIV/AIDS, M/M, Romance, Sex Work, Space AIDS, Space Heroin, Strippers & Strip Clubs, This is a highly problematic RENT AU, sorry everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 02:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20827634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: Luke knows he’s destined for more than a scorching rock burning out on the edge of the outer rim.





	Before the Suns Set

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse for this!!! Blake and I drunk saw RENT (which I hated) and then watched the Empire Strikes Back and somehow in the midst of this we decided Luke was Mimi, dancing on the fire escape, and this story was born. I wish it was a joke, or crack, but it's dead serious. Read the tags please!!! It's fucked up. 
> 
> There's. second half coming so stay tuned! This is just the first act

Luke knows he’s destined for more than a scorching rock burning out on the edge of the outer rim. 

He’s not sure _what, _exactly, but when he lies on his cot with his eyes closed, imagining Tatooine’s suns dropping below the jagged horizon line and giving way to an endless crush of stars, he allows himself to dream of glittering futures, clothes he doesn’t have to beat the dust out of at the end of the day. Older men with money, with ships, tender eyes and rough hands and the means to take him away from the endless wavering mirage of the desert and into the galaxy.

Luke’s aunt and uncle don’t know that he works three nights a week at the Cantina. They’d most certainly disown him if they did, throw him out into the desert to fend for himself. He imagines what _that_ life might look like sometimes, too. Dancing at the Cantina every night for shit tips from the drunk salvagers who make their way through Tatooine, trying to charm his way into men’s beds so he doesn’t have to choose between getting mugged by sand people in the mine ruins or suffocating in the midnight sandstorms. Selling whatever’s left in his stash just to pay for a room. Trading drugs and flesh for somewhere to stay, living day to day, moment for moment, dodging the impossible heat of two suns out to kill him. 

It sounds more glamorous, in some ways, than the way he lives right now. Farm-boy by day, the Cantina’s whipping-boy by night, stretched to the breaking point between two polarized lives. If his aunt and uncle threw him out at least _then _he'd know who he was. Quit trying to reconcile two warring halves and just sink into the version of himself who, three nights a week, is paid in death sticks to get cuffed to a piece of salvage and flogged. The version of himself who, three nights a week, gets on all fours and arches his back to create a concave deep enough for men to drop units, sweat-damp and palm-hot, onto his spine. 

But for now, he’ll dream. One foot in the stars, one on the cracked earth, wishing that tonight is the night the handsomest of them all (Han Solo, smuggler, maybe, if the whispers are true) hooks a finger under his chin and decides he’d rather buy than watch. _Take me away, away from here, anywhere, anywhere but Tatooine, anywhere, anywhere,_ Luke prays as he rests his hand over the clear rectangular case holding his remaining death sticks, a quiet, ugly secret in the linen pocket of his tunic. _Let me get out before I die. There are so many things out to kill me. Just let me die kept on some cruiser with a collar around my neck, not wasting away to nothing on this piece of shit planet, holes in my veins, poison for blood. _His eyes flicker beneath the lids as he counts down, and outside, the suns sink lower and lower. 

—-

Han Solo’s remaining ambition is to complete the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs before this fucking disease kills him. 

He can’t live forever, but glory…glory never dies. It will outlast him, just as it outlasts all good smugglers. No man beats death, but sometimes he gets lucky and his legend does. His memory. Han just has to _do_ something worthy of going down in history, first. One stunt is all he needs to leave a lasting brand on this smoking wreck of a universe. To touch glory before he drops dead. 

Glory feels lightyears away from Tatooine. _Everything_ feels lightyears away from Tatooine, so maybe that’s why Han stays there after he gets clean. There’s a strange comfort in remoteness, in a desert so desolate that it extends on for golden miles as far as the eye can see in every direction. 

It goes like this: he loses Chewie, and the galaxy falls apart, disintegrates into stretches of unbearable loneliness between death sticks and liquor and blind rages. He wakes most days in a cold sweat with raw knuckles, hands shaking until he gets his next fix. He doesn’t remember much from this time, nothing but grinding teeth and the pinch of a needle and the quiet black like a starless sky or the blackest ocean or those great sucking wormholes in space that take ships and siphon them out into some vast nothingness. He’s all set up to die, but then. He pisses off his dealer doing something he doesn't even fucking remember, and before he knows it, he's packing up the _Falcon _and running, hiding, lying low. He’s lost his supply, so all he can do is detox or die. Sink or swim. Come out the other end of the withdrawals or not. 

But things that should die somehow stagger along in Tatooine, and one day he wakes up. The fever breaks, and somehow his heart is still beating. 

That was ten months ago. He’s still here, floating unseen through the shimmering heat of a forgotten world, a forgotten man, thinking that someday he might attempt the Kessel Run again. But for now, he makes deals in the Cantina with mine salvagers, smuggles the goods on short runs to other planets on the outer rim. He doesn’t make much, but it costs close to nothing to live on Tatooine, and he’s built a bit of a name here for himself, the outline of a legend, the ghost of it. Not glory but the very beginnings of it, the smell of exhaust forever lingering in a docking bay, even if there’s not a single ship in sight. 

There’s red sand and cheap liquor and pretty boys some nights at the Cantina, and Han hasn’t recovered from the belief that he doesn't deserve much more than that. So, he remains. He hasn’t died yet. Maybe there’s time. 

—-

Luke notices Han Solo in the crowd tonight, sitting sprawled out at his usual back table, fingers under his jacket and curled idly around the leather strap of his blaster holster. He touches things like he’s not touching them, like his hands move independently of the rest of him, lying hands, thieving hands. Luke wonders what it might be like, to see him operate as a whole. He’s pretty sure he could unify Han Solo, solidify him, make him drop his guard, force him to _forget _that he needs a hand on his gun. He thinks of calluses scraping his cheek, dirty blunt nails against his scalp, and opens his mouth onstage, lets a string of drool drip from his lower lip to the dirty floor as he twists in his shackles. He hopes Han Solo is watching, but you can never tell with men like that. Men split along a fault line, always pretending to do one thing while they’re actually neck-deep in another. Sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors. 

The music picks up, the lights change, and Luke moans, cuts his gaze up soft and coy through the mess of blond across his brow while the crowd whistles. He scans for Han, but he’s gone, has slipped off to some darker, quieter alcove. Luke dances like he’s watching anyway because you never _know _where men like that end up, from what corner their gazes might be coming from. 

Luke thinks, under the legend, the layers, the lies, that there’s something warm about Han’s eyes. A wish embedded in fear, like he might want to leave this godforsaken rock in a flurry of dust and exhaust, too. So he dances to pull, not to entertain. Other men watch, cat-call, toss empty bottles and units up on stage, the former too substantial to pass through the forcefield around the edge and bouncing off instead with muted sizzles, ricocheting back into the crowd and sometimes shattering against the opposite wall. The sound used to make Luke jump, his heart leap up into his throat, the sway of his hips arrest and stutter, but he hardly hears it now. He dances through the chaos, peeling gold lamé from his shoulders, his torso shining under stagelight in a sheen of sweat. 

When it’s all over, he towels himself off in the tight, dingy wings backstage, watching prudently while one of the security guards collects his tips. He shrugs back into his clothes, preparing to let himself out the back once he collects his payment because the bar is a dangerous sea of hungry, grabbing hands at this hour, especially after he dances. But then he sees Han leaning against the door, head bent as he shoulders his way out, disappears into the night. 

“I’ll be back for that tomorrow...gotta go now,” he shoots behind him before slamming past the other dancers and out the back door breathlessly. Wrapping his head and neck to protect himself from the bitter onslaught of sand, he stumbles to the front of the building, squinting in the swirls of grit. Han’s back cuts a dark, hunched figure in the distance, and Luke plots his course by it, prepared to follow. 

—-

They don't tell you how fucking _cold_ the desert gets at night. Han hates it, how you bake all day, stew in your own sweat, but if you leave the Cantina after dark, you’ll freeze if you don’t have a decent jacket, get blinded by sand if you don’t have goggles to protect your eyes from the storms. It took him a few months on Tatooine before he got the drill down, and now it’s second nature. He’s not sure what it means about him or anyone else who survives here. How they just _adapt _to the most inhospitable conditions, carry on as if the landscape isn’t trying to kill them.

After struggling against the wind, he peels off his outerwear and shakes the mess of dirt from the folds onto the stoop before letting himself in. He’s staying in a shit-hole shelter on a shit-hole planet, but that doesn’t mean he needs to let any more sand past the threshold. It already builds up on every surface, the harshest dust, gritty in his teeth, against his cheek on the flat pillow of his cot. He wishes he could sleep in the _Falcon _instead of squatting, but it gets too damn _cold_ in that metal hull. Plus, it’s achingly rich with memories, he half-expects to see Chewie around every corner, hallucinates the heavy crunch of his footsteps, the distant echo of him tinkering in the vents. He can even _smell_ the faintest memory of Wookie in the cockpit, like it seeped into the upholstery, and the whole thing just hurts too fucking much, makes him ache for a death stick to forget it all, but he _can’t, _he can’t start that shit again. So he settles for sand on every surface, sand scrubbing him raw, sand sifting from his hair when he shakes it out, pushes his goggles up into the storm-swept mess of it.

Fires don’t last with the night winds, so Han doesn’t bother. He managed to buy a generator at the Tosche Station and trade a salvager transport for an electric heater, and together, the two last for a few hours on the coldest nights. He fires them up and sits there on a Bantha skin, warming his hands by the glowing cherry-red coils, thinking about how only a few hours from now, it’ll be unbearably hot again. There’s nothing but extremes on Tatooine, barren and blanched, burnt and blustering. You either freeze or you catch fire. Sink or swim. 

Someone knocks on the door, and Han jumps; he's convinced that if anyone manages to find him squatting here, it’s because he owes them money and they’re here to collect. He grabs his blaster and opens the door a tentative crack, “Who the fuck are you?” he barks through his teeth, squinting into the sand. 

It’s a boy. Short, slight, eyes blue and glittering and reduced to slits, the rest of his face covered in fabric to protect himself from the sand, so his voice is muffled as he asks, “Got a light?” 

Han blinks, stunned. He tries to remember the last time he was authentically caught off guard to the point of floundering and comes up short. “Do I know you?” The boy opens his mouth to say something, and Han notices his teeth are chattering, so before he can answer, he holds the door ajar, gestures reluctantly for him to come inside. “Out of the wind, kid, you’re shivering,” he gripes, slamming the door back into place before the wind buffets them in grit. 

The boy unwinds his scarf from his face and neck, littering the floor in sand, and Han would complain if he wasn't too busy narrowing his eyes, bristling at the eerie familiarity of him. Maybe he reminds him of his own past, a shadow of the boy _he_ used to be years ago, too-thin and strung-out and shining in that way junkies always shine before they burn out, before they die. But this boy has the bluest eyes, the sort you don’t forget if you’ve seen them once, forever haunted. So maybe he’s more than a ghost. “I got lost, turned around in the windstorm,” he says. “It blew the pilot out in my flashlight…it’s one of the old ones. Piece of shit with an actual flame in the glass dome,” he explains, holding it up. “Maybe you can light it up for me.” 

Han wants to speak, wants to snap at this kid, send him away, but he can’t locate any of his usual wit or bitterness. All he can do is look and try to remember where he’s seen such blue eyes before. 

“What are you staring at?” the boy asks, neither coy nor accusatory. Then a careful, hard-to-read grin twists up the corner of his mouth, which is plush and chapped. 

“Your hair in the moonlight,” Han snaps, voice barbed, sardonic. He has learned that if you steep your words in enough sarcasm, most people won’t notice if those words happen to be the truth. The boy cocks his head, and that wheat-field-gold hair glitters the same way the horizon line of Tatooine does when it’s high noon and Han is so thirsty that he stares out into the desert and thinks he sees a snake of water glimmering just out of reach. It’s been a long time since Han felt anything other than lonely. It’s strange, and he doesn’t like it, so he growls, shaking his head. “That self-satisfied smile of yours reminds me of someone, that’s all.” 

“Hmm, a girl?” the boy murmurs, and this time it’s _definitely_ coy. 

Han’s guard flies back up, fierce and thorned. “No, a Wookie. He’s dead now,” he grumbles, ripping his gaze away from that sharp, arresting blue and striding to the empty fireplace, where he keeps the matches. “Lemme see that piece of junk,” he orders, holding a hand out to take the flashlight without looking up. 

“Sorry about your friend,” the boy mumbles, walking over and standing too close to Han, close enough he can smell the sweat and Cantina smoke on him, salt and spice and _youth, _so strong that it makes Han’s mouth water with the ache of memory. 

“Hold this,” Han instructs, ignoring the condolences like he always does. He hands the flashlight back to the boy, and their fingers brush with a dangerous sort of electricity. _Fuck_ those blue eyes, that wheat-field hair. There are things he doesn’t have time for anymore, that he did a lot before he got sick but can’t imagine doing now. Boys like this are one of them. “I gotta pry the dome off to get to the pilot, the hatch is rusted shut.” 

They wrestle with it for a moment before the glass pops off, exposing the wick. Han tries to light it several times, but the match keeps blowing out before it ignites, so the boy cups his palm around it protectively. Han’s hand shakes. 

“Ow,” the boy hisses, fingers singed from the wayward flame. “You burnt me.” Han inhales sharply, prepares to apologize, but the boy’s grinning again, shaking his head, eyes hooded and sweet in this way that a boy’s eyes should never be, the way _nothing_ on the outer rim has any right being. He sucks his newly pink fingers into his mouth, like he can lick away the sting, and Han’s breath catches, his teeth grind when their eyes meet. “Thanks for the light,” Luke garbles around his knuckles before pulling them out. They glisten in the pilot’s blue flicker. “G’night.” 

“Night, kid,” Han grumbles, folding his arms over his chest defensively, like scarred, sunburnt arms can protect his heart. “Stay safe out there. Sounds like the wind’s died down some, but...you know. Sand people like to prowl during these storms. Watch your back.” 

“Sure,” the boy says through one of those hard-to-shake smiles, putting his hood up again, lazily wrapping his face. “I won’t talk to any strange men.” 

And like that, he’s gone. 

—-

Luke stands a few feet away from Han Solo’s door, waiting for the pilot to blow back out so he has an excuse to return, heart in his throat, chest tight with the thrill of being _looked_ at with the heat and precision of man who’s been hungry for years. The wind has weakened, though, and the pilot remains stubbornly lit. His hand moves instinctively to the clear case in his pocket as it always does when he’s waiting for something, but he finds no familiar shape, just sand-gritty fabric folds and emptiness. 

It turns out he doesn't need an excuse to let himself back in. 

“It blew out again?” Han asks, and if he’s hopeful, if he’s grateful, the nuance doesn’t register on his face. 

“No,” Luke murmurs, scanning the room with his eyes before dropping onto all fours, palming over the sand-rough floor. “I dropped something.” 

“You sure we haven’t met, kid?” Han sighs skeptically, like Luke is more recognizable from this angle, on the ground with a dip in his back. 

“I know I had it when I walked in…it’s a clear case, maybe I dropped it when we lit the pilot,” he says, crawling closer to the fireplace, where there’s a sticky patina of soot and ash. He sees no shimmer, nothing, but he feels like even blinded he could find his stash in the darkness, _feel_ it out, like the hunger in his heart would lead him home, that unquenchable longing ache. So he closes his eyes and pauses for a moment, hoping for a magnetic draw. Instead, he feels the dry wind rattle through the terracotta chimney, cold and brittle. He feels Han’s eyes boring into him with an insistent sting. 

He arches his spine deeper, swivels his hips in a slow, hypnotic circle like he does onstage. “They say I have the best ass on this side of Tatooine,” he offers, shooting a glance over his shoulder. 

Han’s mouth, which was parted, snaps shut defensively, his eyes flashing. “Can’t imagine it would be all that _difficult_ a title to procure on this planet,” he jokes, but his gaze is still locked in, crawling up and down Luke’s body, like if he looks long enough, the layers of linen and muslin will fall away like shroud cloths.

“Well, what do you think? Is it true?” Luke asks, snapping his hips once more, reaching back and flipping the hem of his smock up over his back, leaving nothing but clingy, desert-beige leggings to separate night from skin. 

Han shuffles uncomfortably, cheeks coloring. Luke wants to lick up the side of his face, scour his tongue with stubble, sneak hands into the creases and folds of his shirt to find seams, rips, fissures. Han Solo is the sort of man he thinks about when he touches himself, the sort of man he thinks about when he dances, the sort of man he thinks about when he grieves the fact that he’s dying and likely won’t live to do half the things he dreams of. Han Solo is staring at him right now, and Luke only _just_ noticed that his eyes are hazel, not brown, nearly green they’re so bright in the glow of his coil-heater. “What?” he snaps accusatorially, several beats too late. 

“You’re staring,” Luke explains, rocking back and forth once on his knees before standing, brushing himself off. 

“It’s because you look familiar,” Han grinds out, backing away from Luke, like he’ll crumble if they touch. 

“Like your dead Wookie?” Luke fires back. 

Han shows his teeth, sharp and defensive, the parody of a grin. “Only when you smile, kid.” 

Luke feels in his pocket again, in case he missed something. “Do you ever go to the Cantina?” he asks lightly, even though, of course, he knows. “I dance there,” he adds, frowning as he comes up empty-handed. “Help me look, will you?” 

“Right, the Cantina,” Han says, tilting his head back and laughing raw and cold, shaking his head. Sweat flickers in the fluttering hollow of his throat as he swallows, even though it’s still freezing. Luke imagines the bite of salt under his tongue. “They tie you up there, don’t they.”

Luke shrugs, grabbing a Bantha skin off the floor and shaking it out, looking under it for the reflective shine of the clear case. “They pay me, too. And it’s legal, unlike smuggling.” 

“I didn’t recognize you without the handcuffs,” Han drawls, sarcasm twisting the corner of his mouth up into a biteable half-smile. “And are you sure it’s legal? You look sixteen.” 

“M’nineteen,” Luke corrects, carding a hand through his hair, watching Han watch him, expression as guarded and unreadable as the ever-changing shade of his irises. “But I’m old for my age.” 

“That’s what every backward farm-boy-turned-junkie thinks, I bet,” Han counters, smirking. “You’re not special, kid. You’re just another addict. I’d know, I used to be the same way.” 

Something dark and hot curls up in Luke’s chest, a familiar franticness, a ticking clock. “I could quit whenever I want,” he lies, licking his lips, tracking the way Han’s gaze stays defiantly locked without flicking down in distraction. “Sometimes I like to feel good. There are only so many ways to do that on this godforsaken shitty planet.” He licks his lips again, this time slower, with his weight shifted to one side so that his hip pops out. It should be impossible for Han to _not_ think about laying his hand there on that warm, inviting ditch. 

“_Junior,” _Han hisses instead, voice thick with condescension. “You’re shivering while you sweat, and for fucking _once,_ it’s temperate. I used to _be_ like you. I know what it’s like. Can’t hide that shit from someone who’s lived it.” 

“Fine,” Luke concedes, rolling his eyes, turning back to the room. It’s darker now, like the stars have settled behind clouds. “Help me look, at least. Light a match, it’s too dark to see in here.” 

“Used my last match fixing your flashlight,” Han grins, sitting down on the Bantha skin, with his knees parted wide and lazy, tilting back onto his elbows and looking up at Luke with those between-color eyes. “Why don't you sit down and talk instead of tearing up my place looking for shit that’ll kill you.” 

Luke collapses next to him, giving up, thinking there are a hundred itches to scratch, not just the clock in his ribcage, the scabby graveyard in the crease of his elbow. He lets his shoulder brush Han’s side, breath held at first, then staggering out when Han doesn’t pull away. “At least you have windows to let the moonlight in.” He wants Han to look at him, wants him to notice his hair again, to run callus-rough fingers through the waves of it. He wants to stay the night here, mouth full, throat salty. He wants a fix. He wants to get the hell off this fucking planet with its abandoned mines and scattered moisture farms and miles upon miles of dead, burning sand. He wants and he wants and he wants. 

Han studies him quietly, like he can see all that want written on him, raw and ugly. Luke’s instinct is to turn away, take his clothes off, hide and deflect, but there’s something oddly comforting about being seen. About worry written in the eyes of someone who knows what that sort of want feels like, how it masquerades as need. “Give me your hands,” Han sighs, frowning, looking away and holding his palms up like he wants payment. “I’ll warm them up. You’re shivering so hard, kid, s’making me dizzy.” 

“You sure it’s the shivering?” Luke asks, offering his hands. They look small as Han rubs life into them, everything about Han broader, rougher, more expansive than he’s used to. He’s a small boy from a small farm on a small planet, and maybe this is his ticket to something bigger. “You have a ship, don’t you?” 

Han’s gaze snaps back to him. “Where’d you hear that?” 

Luke shrugs, soaking up the solidity, the heat of being touched. “The Cantina. Is it true?” 

“Yeah, it’s true. I have a good ship, a _great_ ship, actually. Wish I could live in her, but I’d freeze to death and…well. Still smells like Wookie,” he says, shaking his head, gritting his teeth self-deprecatingly. He squeezes Luke’s hands, perhaps subconsciously. Luke squeezes back regardless. “She’s fast, though,” he adds. 

“Maybe someday you can show me,” Luke murmurs, lacing their fingers. 

Han half-smiles, eyes downcast, palm suddenly perspiration damp. “Maybe someday.” 

“What’s her name?” 

“The _Millennium Falcon_,” he says, and it’s the softest and most raw his voice has been all night. It’s a nice voice, when it’s not ripped up with pain, patched up in sarcasm scar tissue. “They call me Solo. You can call me Han,” he adds. 

“I know your name,” Luke murmurs, thumbing over the back of his hand, loving the shift of hot skin over broad knuckles, the way he’s _letting_ him touch, the way their bodies are nudging closer, side by side, moonlight filtering in through the window in weak beams. “They call me Luke.” 

“And I can call you?” 

“Luke,” he shrugs. 

Han rubs a deep, insistent circle into the center of his palm, like he’s trying to smudge the permanent lines there to smoothness. “Luke,” he repeats quietly. 

——

Han tries hard not to think of Luke, but dangerous things have a way of getting under his skin, into his head, hooking him and pulling him along until he’s drowning in poison before he even has time to realize he’s treading water. It’s how he got hooked on death sticks. How he got infected. How he ended up on Tatooine. 

He drinks to forget those blue eyes and the sweet, terrible curve of that ass, but there are things etched onto the backs of his eyelids, now. Even if his head is spinning and there’s a girl on his lap and someone offering him twice the units he’s used to for a cargo run to Kamino, he’s haunted. He thinks of narrow fingers tangled in his own, the way the crystal-white chill of the moon reflected in his hair, making the gold seem silver. He thinks of the shape of his mouth, how it might feel to kiss someone who still knows what hope feels like. His lips would be soft, they would be hungry. Han’s stomach drops, and he tries in vain to forget it all. Still, he ends up stumbling home from the Cantina every night, disappointed that Luke wasn’t there, that he left Han searching fruitlessly for him in other boys, drinking until his vision was so hazy that he couldn’t tell any of the slight-build blond dancers apart, knowing only that none of them were Luke. 

After the third night, Han ends up in the _Falcon_. The wind billows outside, and her hull creaks like an animal in pain, a cacophony of moans and whispers and sobs that make it easier for him to sit in her cockpit and stare out into the night and grieve. He folds his arms and yells into them, tired of the way he can’t cry anymore, tired of the way he’s wasting away here on this rock of a planet, getting weaker and weaker while the Kessel Run and the promise of glory waits for him, just out of reach. He yells until his throat aches, until it feels ripped open and bleeding, until it’s so raw he can only smell blood. 

And still, even alone in his ship, he thinks of blue eyes, of gold hair, of a boy on his hands and knees at his feet, begging for him. 

It’s been a long time since a boy flirted so unabashedly with Han, let alone a nineteen-year-old farm-boy, the sort of untouchably beautiful thing he’s been convinced his criminal’s hands would break even _before_ he got sick. Maybe that’s why he can’t shake Luke: he seems impossible. He should be able to _see_ the disease on Han, sense his expiration date, the death under his skin like rust on a ship’s hull, dry-rot. And maybe he _does_. But he still dropped to his knees, he still arched his back, he still begged and begged, like he couldn’t catch anything if Han gave in. 

Or maybe he’s already caught it, and they're both spinning out toward nothingness, trying to catch hold of a single moment of glory before they burn out in space, alone, alone. There’s a lot about Luke that reminds Han of himself, and maybe the track marks are a map to something else. Maybe anyone who’d ever reach out and touch him is sick in the same way. Maybe he can only see and be seen by other sick people. Maybe everyone in the fucking galaxy is either sick or just hurtling toward sickness. It feels that way, at least, in the slums of the outer rim. 

He stares out the thick, water-marked cockpit glass, squints until the horizon line blends into the sky and he can pretend the pinpricks of sand are stars. He thinks of Luke again, even though he doesn’t want to. Luke by his side, not in the co-pilot chair (he still imagines Chewie’s ghost there, the memory of him solid and painful like the yawning emptiness of a black hole) but perhaps at his feet. Soft blond hair under his palm, between his fingers, a shoulder digging into his inner thigh. He thinks of the way Luke looked up at him from the ground, and his stomach twists in hunger, in loneliness, in shame. 

That reckless wanting is all the more reason for Han to forget him. 

He once set aside the possibility of ever fucking without guilt and fear again, but now there’s an eager boy with a plush needy mouth and slender hands and the best ass on this side of Tatooine, and he’s forced to remember _why. _To reconcile the truth of his body, his illness, the aborted future ahead of him, parched and barren. 

He doesn't have that much time left. Best to spend it here, in the _Falcon_, chasing stars and glory out in the cold black of space, not in the warm ditch between a blond boy’s thighs, thumbing over his track marks like his touch could heal, rather than infect. If he goes down, best he’s alone. 

—-

Luke spends three impossibly dull days on the farm with no reprieve save for the death sticks. By the time his long-awaited shift at the Cantina arrives, he’s crawling out of his skin, humming with unspent energy, teeth grinding in his skull, heart in his throat. He needs, he _needs. _The night stretches ahead of him, and he dreams of things beyond his means, things nearly impossible to come by on Tatooine, but things he _needs_ all the same. He wants to go _out, _out into the galaxy, out into the stars. He wants to be a savior or the face that launched a thousand ships. He wants men to die for him, live for him, fight over him until the sand is red with blood. He wants the empire to fall for him. Because of him. _He needs. _

Maybe his hunger wouldn’t grow so fierce and wild if his life outside the Cantina was something more than moisture farms and droid repairs and red, scoring dry earth surrounding him like an endless funeral march. Maybe if he wasn’t fucking _dying_ doing absolutely nothing with his life, he wouldn’t _need_ to make the very best of the moments he steals away for, escapes in. As night falls, he feels his pulse speed in anticipation: maybe tonight is the night Han Solo marches up to the stage, demands they lower the forcefield, and drags Luke off to his ship to take him away. To _have him, _mouth hot and rough on his throat as he prays _I can’t stop thinking about you, kid. _

Luke stalks to the Cantina, hips swaying, heart thundering. He wants to run away, he _needs_ to run away. He needs to be swept off his feet and smuggled like precious cargo. He needs to feel _alive _before he dies. He needs, he needs. 

He dances hard and rough, even though he doesn't see Han in the crowd. It’s hard to make out individual faces anyway through the haze, and the sweat dripping into his eyes has him stinging. The men are ravenous tonight, but that also makes them generous, so he leaves his performance with his tunic pockets heavy with tips. He thinks of Han Solo’s big, sweet hands holding his own, the way the moon watched them in a way the suns refuse to witness anything save for skin blistering beneath their rule. 

The moon watches now, too, as he wraps his face and jogs the now-familiar route to Han’s shelter. Maybe Han will put him up against the wall tonight, kiss him breathless. Or maybe he’ll go back to the Cantina on his arm, and they’ll share drinks until they’re dizzy, until the colors of Han’s eyes blend or settle or solidify into something he can sink into. Or maybe he’ll see the _Falcon _tonight. Maybe they’ll fire her up and leave Tatooine at long last, the insufferable heat and desert steeped in loneliness nothing but a memory. 

Luke is sweat-sticky under his layers as he lets himself in, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. “Hi,” he says, unwrapping his face, eyes shut against the sprinkle of sand. “Missed you at the Cantina tonight. S’still early, though...we should go out,” he offers as Han stares at him, mouth parted in incredulity, slack and kissable. “Take me out,” Luke clarifies, stalking over, dropping to his knees and walking over on them, bracketing Han’s wide lap with spread thighs. “Take me out.” 

Han tolerates it for a labored, trembling moment. There’s heat and shock and hands latching onto his waist to steady, a line creased through Han’s brow. Then, instead of a kiss, he’s throwing him off. “Kid,” he snarls, scrambling away as the Bantha skin bunches under his heels. “Who the fuck do you think you are.” 

It’s not a question, it’s an accusation. Luke knows who he is, though, he’s lonely and he’s sick and he’s young and he _needs. _So he doesn’t let Han deter him, he follows, he climbs back into his lap with his mouth open against the thunder of his pulse and licks at the salty scald there. He feels Han’s blood speed, feels his wavering restraint before it snaps, and _again, _he’s sent sprawling. “_Stop,” _Han snaps, eyes flashing. “You don’t just _get_ to show up here uninvited and throw yourself at me. You don't know anything. Not a single fucking thing.”

“I know you’re lonely,” Luke purrs, undeterred, body still alight with desperation, chest adrenaline-tight. “I know you can’t keep your eyes off me.” He’s determined, but his confidence is fracturing along a fault line. He _does_ know Han wants him, he can feel the desire burning up under his hands, and beyond the desire, the worry, the intrigue, the tenderness. He felt it when they held hands in the darkness three nights ago, he can feel it in uncertain waves now. But there are things stronger than desire, things like fear, things like viruses. _Please,_ he thinks. _Please take me. Take me out. Take me away._

Han drags his gaze away, like he’s trying to prove a point. “The door’s that way,” he growls, pointing messily, arm trembling as he holds it out. “Take your drugs. Your fucking blue eyes.” 

And that, there, makes all the difference. Han wouldn’t mention his eyes if he didn't want him, if he didn’t _need. _He wouldn’t be stumbling to his feet, raking his hands through his hair, shaking his head, questioning his resolve. He’d just be shoving Luke out the door. “No,” he says, standing, backing Han into the wall, carefully, giving him enough time and space to put an end to it if that’s what he really wants. It’s _not, _though. Luke can tell it’s not, can smell hesitation in the liquor on his breath. “Take me out. Or take me, here. M’not picky.” 

“Not today,” Han fumes, placing one hand on each of Luke’s shoulders, shoving him away unconvincingly, staggering, eyes wide and wild and conflicted with regret. “This thing...this thing maybe could have worked in another lifetime, another galaxy. You could have barged in and showed me your ass and flirted, and I would have fallen for it. Eaten it up, even, pretty boy like you begging like that, but not now, not anymore,” he explains messily, waving a hand through the air dismissively. “Come back another day, kid.” 

Luke laughs, the suddenness of it nearly choking him. “Another day?! Why? What makes one day on Tatooine different from another? Fucking nothing, they’re all hot, they’re all boring unless you decide to do something different.” 

“And I’m deciding not to. M’saying no, kid. Leave,” he spits out, and Luke doesn’t believe it, not an ounce of it. There’s too much softness to his mouth, too much pain in his eyes, too much energy surging forward like he wants to grab him by his tunic and haul him in, bite his lips. 

“I don’t fucking live like that,” Luke tells him, stepping back into Han’s space, not caring if it burns him, if it stings. “I was born here, born to _nothing. _My parents are dead, and all I do is think of all there is out there, on other planets,” he explains frantically, breath coming nervous and fast, heart beating out of his chest. “If opportunity comes around, I can’t say another day. I have to say _today. _I have to jump on it, here, now. No future, no past, just...here. Like this.” 

Han’s smile is cold, mocking. “What, so you think _I’m_ your big opportunity? That fucking a smuggler will win you a ship? Doesn't work like that, Luke. You think you’re so _evolved, _so enlightened, huh? Well listen good: you’ll still be a junkie even if I fuck you. You’ll still be a junkie even if you leave Tatooine.” 

It’s the first thing he’s said that effectively penetrates the wild, reflective barrier Luke has built around himself, fashioned from endorphins and death sticks and desperation. So he presses back against it, throws himself upon the things that can impale him. He reaches for Han, and they grapple, the air around them and between their bodies sharp and charged, crackling with static electricity. _Please. Please take me. Take me out. Take me away. _“Doesn’t matter,” he lies. “Because there’s only this. Us. That’s all that matters right now.” 

Han sucks in his labored exhalation, licks his lips, and fights Luke like fighting is fucking. “You mighta had me hot a few years ago, kid,” he hisses, letting go of his wrists in favor of grabbing his throat in a sudden, fierce fist. Luke whites out, air coming thin and snagged as he fails to swallow, to inhale. “But I don't get hot anymore, that’s why I'm on this planet. Can’t fucking burn me up. Nothing can...m’already burnt out.” 

He lets go, and Luke gasps, coughing. 

—-

_I should tell him, I should...I should tell him, _Han thinks frantically, gaze skirting over the potential bruises forming on that tender neck. _I should tell him it’s not _him,_ especially, it’s everything, it’s anyone. It’s a time bomb, it’s sex, it’s terror, it’s loneliness. _But Luke rubs at his throat, and Han remains silent.

He watches Luke stumble to his knees, pupils blown as huge and glittering and black as the whole of the galaxy, and he _wants_ to be angry, he _wants_ to send him away, but.

But Luke is so young and so high, and as much as Han wants to feel anything but worry, it consumes him. He _can’t_ let this nineteen-year-old stripper leave here with his death wish. He wants to not care. He _wants_ to be as hardened and frozen over as he claims, he _wants_ to slam the door in his face, lose those wild blue eyes to the night, but he won’t. He _can’t. _He knows what it’s like. This boy doesn’t need to be fucked, but he also doesn’t need to be sent out into a sandstorm to die, to crawl into the bed of a less sympathetic smuggler, or worse, end up in Jabba’s hands, chained and dancing for survival instead of units. 

So Han sighs, drops to his haunches, and studies Luke as he sits there, gaze wide and pleading. _Take me out. Take me away. Take me. “_Hey,” he sighs, shaking his head, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Look, kid. You got somewhere to stay tonight?”

“My aunt and uncle’s...they live on a moisture farm, I’ll need to take a transport back. After the storm clears, I’ll leave, I’ll—“ 

“M’not gonna sleep with you, m’not gonna even let you kiss me,” Han explains, even as Luke’s tongue sweeps his lips, and his gaze stubbornly fixates there, the infernal flash of pink over pink. _I should tell him, it’s not his fault I can’t touch him that way. I should tell him._ “But m’not gonna let you drive a transport all the way home like this, alright? M’gonna set you up with a bed, here. You can sleep by the heater, but you better be gone by morning. Deal?” 

Luke’s eyes flash like he’s going to fight it, but Han reaches out and lays a careful hand on his shoulder. It’s gentle but firm, and as he thumbs under the sharp cut of Luke’s clavicle, he relents. “Alright,” he says. “Fine.” 

Han’s exhalation is long and shaky as he claps Luke on the back and stands, relief and regret warring inside him in equal measure. There are things he _would_ want from Luke in a different universe, on a different planet. If he was young, too. Still using, still dreaming, still stupid enough to think he was going to survive a reckless life. That there was time. “That’s it,” Han sighs, shaking his head. “I’ll be right back. Gotta go get some more skins from the _Falcon _so we don’t freeze. 

Luke looks up at him, expression huge and startled and _hungry, _like he hasn’t eaten in months. “Can I come?” 

Han rolls his eyes but gestures for him to follow anyway. “Sure.” 

They fight through the wind and sand to the cargo hold Han keeps her in. He slams his shoulder into the rusted lever that opens the hulking doors, ushering Luke into the widening gap between them before he stumbles in after. “There she is,” he announces, jaw tight. 

Luke actually laughs. “What a piece of junk. To think, _this_ was the ship I was imagining my big getaway on.” 

Han points at him, eyes flashing as he pops the door and a ladder descends to crawl up inside her. “Yeah, she might not look like much, but it’s what’s on the inside that counts. And she’s _fast. _You want to get away from Tatooine in style or in a hurry?” 

Luke’s smile is warm and bright, and it cuts through Han so suddenly and fiercely that he’s left breathless. “I don’t care. As long as we leave,” he says, hoisting himself up, hooking a finger into Han’s holster to steady himself. “And you’re there.” 

Han grinds his teeth and tries to ignore the way his skin tingles, like Luke is a nettle or a chemical burn. _I should tell him,_ he thinks as they ascend into the ship. _I should tell him that I am the nettle. That my blood leaves chemical burns. _

—

It’s quiet and stale and dank inside the _Falcon_, but Luke can still feel remnants of her former glory, tall tales and memories clinging to the hull like the fragments of holograms. He walks beside Han, close and tight, so much so that he can smell his sweat, feel the hot, boozy huff of his breath as he sighs laboriously. Luke is pushing his luck, he knows it, but that’s what desperate men do. 

Han pops open a hatch and tugs out a flat-looking pillow, some military-style thermal blankets, and another Bantha skin. “For you,” he says dryly, but before Luke can take them, a sinister beeping sounds in the pocket of his tunic. 

It ricochets off the metal walls of the ship, unwilling to be muffled by fabric, and Luke’s cheeks color, even though he _knew, _he was _planning_ on telling Han tonight, because you don’t fuck men without telling them about this thing. There’s always a chance of getting turned away, spat upon, broken in two. But Han hadn’t even waited to find this out before he refused Luke’s seduction, so he sort of _forgot. _Now it’s loud and insistent between them, their eyes locked, Han’s mouth a flat, troubled line as Luke fishes within the folds of his tunic and comes out with a copper vial clasped tightly in his palm. 

“What’s that? Kid, you can stay, but you _cannot_ use here, not in my house, not in _my ship—”_

_“_It’s not drugs,” Luke snaps, shaking his hair from his eyes, frowning. “It’s medicine.” 

He holds it up then because it’s easier than uttering the unspeakable. Everyone, every smuggler, anyway, every no-good, lonely low-life criminal out here trying to survive in the outer rim slums _knows w_hat that narrow copper vial means: the cocktail of pills it contains, pale blue and white and the round, bitter red ones that always leave a foul taste in the back of Luke’s throat when he swallows them. Han knows, he sees the recognition dawn on his face, the gray-green of his eyes darken to a sudden brown as his mouth falls open. 

Luke expects him to back away, but he doesn’t. He drops the bedding and grabs Luke wrists. “You?” he murmurs. 

“Yes,” Luke whispers, stepping closer, inching his hands onto Han’s forearms, thumbs digging into the ditches of his elbows, deeper, harder, where there are probably scars, evidence of past vices. “You?” he asks. 

“Luke,” Han says like it pains him, abruptly turning his head to stare at the ship’s siding, blinking rapidly, something organic flickering in his jaw. It’s not _no, _not at all, and that is the moment that Luke knows for certain they’re the same. “I should tell you.” 

“Tell me what? If we’re both sick, then—”

“It’s not just that. It’s that...that I’m a fucking mess, Luke. I’m not the sort of guy who can save you from your shit, okay? Because I’m neck-deep in my own. Hardly keeping it together,” he explains in a rush, dropping his gaze to their shoes, and _oh _Luke feels his blood speed up under his skin, the sorrow of his own disease, fast and scared and precious and he reflexively shakes his head, before pressing it to Han’s shoulder. 

“I should tell _you, _actually, that the first time we met? It wasn’t the first time, for me. I knew who you were, I broke my flashlight just so I had an excuse to knock on your door. I picked you out of the crowd, for your ship, _maybe, _but mostly...mostly because I liked you.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Han says after a moment. He tries to snarl it, but it comes out half-lilted instead, curled up at the edges with an almost-smile, self-deprecating and snagged to sanded-down tatters. “What about me? What’s there to like?” 

“You’re handsome,” Luke counters, turning his head so that his lips grace the fluttering place where Han’s pulse resides. “And, sure, you’re a criminal, but everyone here is. So many of them, though...they’re not honorable, I guess. Not like you. They’d have taken advantage of me that first night, thrown me away the next morning. They don’t care about doing the right thing, but I can tell..._I can tell_ you do.” 

The space between them wavers, like the pilot that first night, held to the wind until it snuffed. 

“Why, because you’re so good at reading people?” Han whispers eventually, peeling Luke off him, stumbling backward, shaking his head. “I said I wouldn’t kiss you tonight.”

“You don’t have to,” Luke says, bending down to scoop the bedding up off the floor of the _Falcon_. “We don’t have to know where this is going, alright? Only that...only that it is. Going, somewhere, eventually. Not tonight, maybe not tomorrow night, but...eventually. So how about we make a bed in the cockpit and sleep there tonight? After I take my medicine.”

Han is quiet for a long time, hands braced on his hips, eyes boring holes into the metal grating beneath his feet. “Okay,” he says finally. “Here goes nothing,” he adds, crossing his arms. “We might freeze in here.” 

“Not if we stay close. Under the thermal blankets,” Luke explains, cheeks hot, heart in his throat. “And don’t say here goes_ nothing_. You don’t know if it’s nothing, not yet, right? So just...here goes.” 

“Fine,” Han grinds out, following him down the hall to the cockpit. “Here goes.” 

—-


End file.
